You know, what this scenario really needs is somebody to play Grant to McChrystal’s Young Napoleon. From ABC: “As one Marine told ABC News, ‘the softball is teed up for Petraeus to hit it out of the park.'” Ta-daa!

NPR notes that “commanders must carefully negotiate the discrepancy between the enormous power they wield in the field and the deference they must show to their civilian superiors.” Then they offer up the Conway Cabal as an example, despite the fact that Washington was not Conway’s civilian superior. Bonus points, though, for invoking something besides McClellan and MacArthur.

These are all from the first page of Google results I got, and it’s not even been twenty-four hours since McChrystal got called to the principal’s office.

I find it highly ironic that it was Theodore Roosevelt who followed McKinley into the White House after an assassin’s bullet ended his presidency. Bush is now back in Texas settling into private life, and President Obama is channeling Roosevelt. Funny how history comes full circle.